| |
| “I HAVE subdued at last the will to live, | |
| Expelling nature from my weary heart; | |
| And now my life, so calm, contemplative, | |
| No longer selfish, freely may depart. | |
| The vital flame is burning less and less; | 5 |
| And memory fuses to forgetfulness. | |
| |
| “Sometimes I gaze on vacancy so long | |
| That all my brain grows vacant, and I feel | |
| That wondrous influence which doth make me strong | |
| In resolution and unworldly zeal, | 10 |
| Until, abstracted from all time and sense, | |
| I sink into eternal indolence. | |
| |
| “And now I feel my inward life grow still, | |
| A being by itself, which fondly clings | |
| To consciousness which I can never kill, | 15 |
| Yet is abstracted from all outward things, | |
| And slumbers often, and is overgrown; | |
| The sense of self increases when alone. | |
| |
| “I have subdued the will, but gain’d the power | |
| To dwell among the denizens of earth; | 20 |
| I spread my spirit over tree and flower, | |
| And human hearts, and things of meaner birth; | |
| And thinking thus to give my soul away, | |
| I found it grew more conscious every day. | |
| |
| “The simple crowds who hourly pass me by, | 25 |
| I think have lately grown afraid of me; | |
| There is some virtue in this sunken eye, | |
| For sometimes in my dreams I faintly see | |
| The workings of the spirit in the brain, | |
| And living floods that gush in every vein. | 30 |
| |
| “Now, as I am weary of this vain endeavor | |
| To lift my spirit to eternal sleep; | |
| I seek the marble stairs, the sacred river, | |
| The liquid graves below, where, calm and deep, | |
| Beneath where that bright, silent water flows, | 35 |
| Stretch wide the regions of divine repose.” | |
| |
| With thoughts like these the Indian suicide | |
| Dragg’d forth his stiffen’d limbs from his old lair; | |
| He had no garment on his shrivell’d hide, | |
| He shunn’d the grove, and sought the solar glare, | 40 |
| He never look’d aside, and his dead march | |
| Had for its goal a gate of one proud arch. | |
| |
| It rose in sculptur’d splendor on the view | |
| From the surrounding foliage of dark green, | |
| Whose masses of broad shadow did subdue | 45 |
| Its prominent light. The blue sky shone between. | |
| A crowd was on the river’s sacred marge, | |
| And on the Ganges many a gaudy barge. | |
| |
| Down to that river he descended now; | |
| And as he press’d the last steps of the stair, | 50 |
| A glance of pleasure from beneath his brow | |
| Fell on two jars of porous earthenware. | |
| He seiz’d them with his feeble hands, and tied | |
| One of them to his girdle on each side, | |
| |
| And floated slowly from the crowded Ghaut; | 55 |
| And since no friendly hand was stretch’d to save, | |
| Found in those quiet waters what he sought— | |
| A long rest and an honorable grave. | |
| His faith was righteous, and his ending blest; | |
| And now his soul enjoys eternal rest. | 60 |
| |
